The term “spam” is used to generally refer to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE), gray mail and junk mail. The term is both a noun (the e-mail message) and a verb (to send it). Typically used to advertise products or to broadcast political or social commentary, spam has resulted in hundreds of millions of unwanted messages being transmitted daily via the Internet to almost every e-mail recipient. The continued proliferation of spam is due mostly to the fact that, despite the annoyance experienced by the vast majority of spam recipients, as an advertising medium, spam produces results. Even if only an infinitesimal number of users reply, spam is still cost effective since e-mail is an inexpensive way to reach people.
In order to address this issue, Internet service providers (ISPs) have added e-mail servers that perform spam filtering. The e-mail servers typically include a software application that filters out incoming spam e-mails. Spam filtering can be configured to filter out messages based on a variety of criteria, including sender's e-mail address, specific words in the subject or message body or by the type of attachment that accompanies the message. Address lists of habitual spammers (blacklists) are maintained by various organizations, ISPs and individuals as well as lists of acceptable addresses (whitelists) that might be misconstrued as spam. Spam filters reject blacklisted messages and accept whitelisted ones. More sophisticated spam filters look for keywords in the e-mail message and attempt to decipher their meaning in sentences in order to more effectively analyze the content and not discard a legitimate e-mail message. In addition, spam filters may also divert mail that comes to you as “Undisclosed Recipients,” instead of having your e-mail address spelled out in the “To” or “CC” field.
Short message service (SMS) is a service available on most mobile phones that permits the sending of short messages (also known as text messages) between mobile phones, other handheld devices, computers, and even standard landline phones. SMS was originally designed as part of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) digital mobile phone standard, but is now available on a wide range of networks, including Third Generation (3G) networks. The SMS service is typically offered as a premium service, where messages are billed on a per-message or per-kilobyte basis.
Some available SMS services offer automated messages sent on a regular basis giving news, weather, financial information, sporting event scores, and other information. In addition, some systems provide for longer SMS messages by breaking up the long message into shorter messages and adding some code indicating that the messages should be strung together at the recipient's device.
Recently, there has been an increasing trend towards the sending of spam to mobile phone users in the form of SMS messages. Since users of SMS services typically pay a premium for received SMS messages, the receipt of spam messages is of great concern to mobile phone users. Some network providers have addressed this issue by enhancing SMS services to provide spam filtering of SMS messages directly. This approach will require significant upgrades to existing SMS service infrastructure, which will be expensive and, due to the time associated with the rollout of such upgrades, is not a short-term solution. It would be advantageous to address SMS spam without requiring major upgrades to the current infrastructure.
A need therefore exists for improved methods, systems, and computer program products for screening SMS messages for spam.